Marvel's The Avengers

After four years, five previous films and countless hours of waiting, watching, getting teased and sorting through backstories, it's finally here: "Marvel's The Avengers," the mother of all big-budget comic adaptations and the stereoscopic supergroup of superhero movies.

As such, it has no right to be this good. A 3-D movie featuring not one, not two, but six brilliant and/or ludicrously muscled protagonists fighting to defend Planet Earth from a Nordic god in a snit has no right to be anything but confusing, ridiculous and generally devoid of simple human affect. And yet it's none of those things.

Instead, Joss Whedon's delicious ode to the Marvel universe boasts clarity, conviction and characters who live and breathe. There are moments of genuine pathos, genuine humor, genuine surprise. As much as the film adheres to the strictures of the standard comic-book movie, it also pops with a knowing, loving, Whedon-world jokiness that keeps everything barreling along.

Hawkeye doesn't spend much time with the group, getting zapped into unthinking submission by Thor's bitter brother Loki, whose plans for world domination involve growling aliens and something called the tesseract, a swirly blue cube with unlimited powers. Everyone wants it. And that's pretty much all you need to know about the plot.

Whedon, a pop-genre magician best known for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," is a master of viewer manipulation - because he never gives up his own seat in the crowd. "The Avengers" does what we expect it to do. Its 3-D-converted visuals look mighty fine, and it racks up a goodly amount of photogenic property damage as the story progresses. And do stay put through the credits: The reward will be the most inspired yet of Marvel Easter eggs - to cap off the most inspired yet of Marvel movies.